Fun with highways: Bay Bridge construction

The Bay Bridge has been closed over the Labor Day weekend for a major engineering feat. As part of the replacement of the eastern span, engineers actually cut out a small section near Yerba Buena Island, and actually wheeled in a new section of bridge. This allows the old doomed bridge to be used while the new one is connected up to the island.

Looking towards Oakland from Yerba Buena island, this is what things looked like before the cut- and-replace operation:

You can see a lot more time-lapsed photos and different angles at the official website for the project. They also posted some photos that better illustrate the move itself at Twitter:

New bridge section awaits its moment of glory on Twitpic Bridge move almost complete! on Twitpic 3,600 tons of steel slowly moving into place on Twitpic
[Click on the images above for full-size versions at TwitPic]

Note that this does not really affect the western half of the bridge near on the San Francisco side, which is what we usually show in our Bay Bridge posts and photos at CatSynth. Except of course that it is closed.

And it looks like the closure could be a little bit longer than excepted. There was a serious crack found in one of the metal supports, so now they are working to repair that before opening. It’s just another reminder of why we want to replace the whole eastern span, hopefully before the next big earthquake. Fortunately, the closure doesn’t affect us at CatSynth all that much.

4 thoughts on “Fun with highways: Bay Bridge construction

  1. Working on road construction on Labour Day? I guess they took the name literally.
    Kidding aside, I hope they find all cracks (if there are more) and fix them. Better that they close down the road longer than to have something happen later – earthquake or just the weight of vehicles on it.
    At least it’s a nice day to do it.

  2. That’s really cool! I always get amazed when watching things happen on a large-scale like a bridge being fixed. I wouldn’t know where to start, but I guess that’s why I’m the one watching and they are the ones actually FIXING it! 😀

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